University Park, Pa. -- Electronic and online communications have transformed many practices in higher education. From multi-media teaching environments to online international research networks, technological interactivity is pervasive in academia, and the realm of academic advising is no exception.
Although many colleges and universities across the country have been integrating aspects of electronic advising into their existing advising practices, Penn State offers an online academic advising site that was built from the ground up to be as comprehensive and as user-relevant as possible.
Located at http://www.psu.edu/advising online, Advising @ PSU provides a central source of information about academic advising and related educational topics at Penn State.
"Advising @ PSU was developed as a supplemental tool for students to become proactive about the steps necessary to earn their degree and become successful students and graduates. The same site also provides valuable information for academic advisers, faculty and staff," said Michael Leonard, assistant director for the Division of Undergraduate Studies and the site's creator.
"Although academic advising is not mandatory, it is always strongly encouraged. Since face-to-face advising is voluntary, and students often turn to Internet resources, the University wanted to make sure a comprehensive and user-friendly compilation of advising-related information was available online for students, as well as for advisers and other members of the University community."
Advising @ PSU was born of requests made by both the Undergraduate Student Government Academic Assembly and Penn State academic advisers in the late 1990s. Both groups were looking to simplify the search for information relevant to academic processes. They were envisioning a comprehensive site that would act as a clearinghouse for all pertinent information related to degree requirements and completion. Leonard began working with all interested parties to bring such a site to fruition.
"It was definitely critical to meet with all constituents so that we could ensure the final product would be truly useful to each end-user, whether a student, an adviser, or any other member of the Penn State community," said Leonard.
In July 2001, Penn State launched "advising@psu.edu" -- the first incarnation of the site. Since then, the site has been refined continually, as necessary content has been added or amended, and the interface has become increasingly more intuitive. When Leonard and his team discovered the program title was being mistaken for an e-mail address, the site was renamed Advising @ PSU, a change that will go into effect on July 19.
Among the site's most salient features is an alphabetical index that links users to valuable academic Web sites that have been exhaustively cross-referenced and cross-indexed. What is most unique about the index is that users can search for colloquial terms in lieu of knowing the University's official terms for certain circumstances. For instance, a user can search for "flunking out" and be brought to links with information about "unsatisfactory scholarship" (the official term).
Other features of Advising @ PSU include a topic index; deadlines; forms; course information; academic requirements; a section for codes, abbreviations and acronyms; the location and contact information for advising centers; a central college information grid, which provides links to each college's homepage, majors, contact information, etc.; and an "Ask the Adviser" e-mail option, among many other useful elements.
Advising @ PSU is not the first or the only online advising tool Penn State offers. Web-based advising systems have been developed at Penn State since the mid-1990s. After surveying the University community to identify critical advising-related need, Penn State introduced eLion. Found at https://elion.psu.edu/ online, eLion is an interactive system delivered by the latest technologies to supplement student-adviser relationships and engage students in informed educational planning.
Among eLion's most useful tools are interactive advising modules, which allow students to pull information directly from their own records to personally and securely explore certain academic scenarios. For example, the late course drop interactive advising module has been very popular among students who have wanted to investigate how dropping a course might affect their GPA or degree trajectory.
"By drawing information from the student's particular academic situation and the student's answers to module-prompted questions, eLion supplies the student with all the possible resulting scenarios and helps them find alternatives they may never have considered before," said Leonard.
If a student still decides to drop a course, he or she can actually process it online. However, since the implementation of this advising module, the University has seen a decrease in the number of late course drops.
"Often, when a student requests a late drop, he or she may be self-conscious, as some emotional angst often accompanies such a decision. Although an in-person adviser will provide the student with the same information about consequences and alternatives, the eLion module necessitates that the student fully read and comprehend each step of the process before responding and moving on. In that process, the information seems to become more fully ingrained, and students appear to be opting for alternatives to late drops," explained Alex Doehrer, senior undergraduate studies adviser and coordinator of communications for the Division of Undergraduate Studies.
Doehrer sees additional benefits to students using both Advising @ PSU and eLion tools.
"When I meet with a student, we'll often browse the sites together. Not only do I know I'm able to verify up-to-the minute information about certain advising policies and practices, but seeing the information allows the student to make note of where certain information is located. This assists them in knowing where to find the information later, and it also gives them a sense of ownership over the information and how it pertains to their success," said Doehrer.
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To learn more about the Advising @ PSU site, visit http://www.psu.edu/advising online. For more information about eLion, visit https://elion.oas.psu.edu/ online.